Week ending 27th May

We hope you managed to visit the GCSE Art Exhibition this week. There was some stunning work on display: eclectic styles and a wide variety of media were in evidence, used with a real confidence and maturity by the students who had clearly enjoyed developing their own individuality during the two year course. Well done to everyone involved.

On Tuesday Chesterton Community College welcomed 150 students from Arbury, Mayfield and St Luke’s primary schools to the Year 1 tennis festival. Our Year 10 sport leadership groups ran the event with professionalism, excellent attitude and engaging delivery. Thank you to all that helped out. A wonderful quote on the day from a Year 1 student was: “This is the best day of my life”.

Congratulations to the following students who have just been selected to represent the county athletics team: Emily Howland (100m, 200m, relay, long jump); Charlie Knott (high jump, hurdles); Thomas Williams (200m, relay) and Jorge Lopes (400m).

As mentioned last week 12 students from Chesterton recently took part in the final stages of the ‘Try Rowing!’ initiative, in partnership with Rob Roy Rowing Club. After having their raw talent spotted on an indoor rowing machine in March, all the students received a fantastic introduction to rowing on the water at Milton Country Park. This introduction ended with a Boat Race against our local friends at Parkside School (honours-even with one win for each school!), and an invitation to join the rowing club. We mention this again as pictures are now available on our Facebook page.

Also on our Facebook page are some photos which were taken during the first lessons of cycling, run by our PE department, at Milton Park and Grantchester. This is proving to be a hugely popular addition to our core PE offer.

This week we congratulate eight trainee teachers on the University of Cambridge PGCE course who have completed their teacher training with us. All eight are looking forward to embarking on their NQT year in September. We thank them for all their contributions to Chesterton and wish them well with their future teaching careers.

Miss Palmer and Dr Hutchinson are continuing with their Farmington Research Project on the use of iPads and GCSE Ethics. There has been a small group of Year 9 students helping with this research. Three students from the group ran ’15 minute forum’ for staff (one of our weekly training sessions for staff). They taught us how to use Plotagon, a story telling app. The students spoken with confidence and were easily able to answer questions about pros and cons of the app in lessons.

Jade in Year 10 won the Cambridgeshire County ladies golf championship on Sunday.

On Thursday 19th of May a group of 48 Art and Photography students from Year 10 went on an exciting trip to London to explore a Photography exhibition at the Barbican and also to investigate the Tate Modern Art gallery. The day began with an early start as the group set off on the coach to central London, driving past famous landmarks such as The Shard and the Gherkin. The first exhibition they saw at the Barbican was called ‘Strange and Familiar’ which was curated by Martin Parr, a notorious photographer, well known for his comedic candid style. The photography students particularly enjoyed seeing this exhibition which gave them inspiration for their current coursework project. At around 12pm they started the walk from the Barbican to the Tate, stopping for a picturesque lunch outside St Paul’s Cathedral and then walking over the Millennium Bridge. At the Tate, the students were free to walk around the galleries in their own time which meant that they could take their time for the pieces they were most interested in. The Art students are currently working on a project called ‘Propaganda’ so, by visiting the Tate, they were lucky enough to see work by Andy Warhol and Barbara Kruger. Overall the students had a very enjoyable day and managed to gain an insight into professional Art and Photography.